Psychic investigator offers a lesson in psychic self-defense

Wednesday

Jan 22, 2014 at 12:31 PM

When you leave a haunted house, Something might try to follow you home.

By Ben SteelmanBen.Steelman@StarNewsOnline.com

Those paranormal-reality shows on television make ghost hunting look great, but Deb Bowen cautions it's not all fun and games.When you leave a haunted house, Something might try to follow you home.Bowen remembers a psychic investigation one night aboard the Battleship USS North Carolina memorial. Danny Bradshaw, longtime Battleship custodian and author of "Ghosts on the Battleship North Carolina," was about to give her a lift in his car."The minute we shut the car doors, I could sense this presence," Bowen said. "It was just awful. I went home, took a bath, washed my clothes and started cleansing the whole house." What happened, Bowen said, was that some kind of entity or thought form, something with extremely negative energy, had tried to hitch a ride.Unsuspecting ghost hunters can pick up invisible, immaterial parasites, Bowen said. That's one reason she's conducting a workshop Friday on how to protect oneself from psychic attacks for the next meeting of Port City Paranormal, the local psychic investigation unit.Skeptics of all things paranormal may have serious reservations, but Bowen is the real thing, said Port City Paranormal's co-founder, Jane Anderson. "Deb's one heck of an investigator," Anderson said. "She's one of the few people who can tune into the emotions of a site almost immediately. She's very intuitive.""My job is to go on investigations and preferably not say a word," Bowen said. Her insights are used as back-up for the audio and video recorders, the Gauss meters and other electronic gear that provide the backbone for Port City Paranormal's investigations.Sometimes, however, she intervenes. Once, while the group was probing an older house downtown, Bowen sensed the presence of the spirit of a woman who had been alive during the 1950s. "I asked her if she remembered the Miljo," Bowen said, mentioning one of Wilmington's most famous drive-ins from the period. "All of a sudden, the meters just lit up."Bowen, a trained social worker with graduate degrees, talked gently to the spirit, saying that her friends and loved ones had moved on to the Other Side and that perhaps it was time for her to go as well. In the end, Bowen said, "A kind of breeze went through the house" and the readings went away.Bowen respects the professionalism of her PCP colleagues. "They're very respectful to the forces on the other side," she said. "They don't yell at them like they do on TV."Don't say nasty things to the ghosts," she added with the hint of a chuckle. "They have feelings, too."Psychic shieldsNot all psychic entities, though, are as benign or friendly as the spirit from the ‘50s.These negative entities can latch on to people or places, psychics say, causing loss of memory or energy, depression or anxiety. They might even manifest themselves through poltergeist phenomena: loud, unexplained noises, or objects being moved around or knocked to the floor.The entities often make themselves known by flashes of light or certain smells,You can do a lot to defend yourself from such entities, Bowen said. Crystals can help. So can certain herbs. (Sage is particularly potent.) Visualization techniques often work: "Imagine yourself in the middle of a big disco ball," Bowen said, suggesting the mirrors on the ball reflect the negative energy and act as a shield.If you're a Christian or a believer in some other faith, prayer is very strong, she said.People can make themselves vulnerable to psychic entities, Bowen said. Many poltergeist incidents, she explained, can be traced to a teenager in the house playing with a Ouija board or tampering carelessly with occult matters. A good housecleaning will do a lot of good. "These things thrive in dirt and chaos and filth," Bowen said.In extreme cases, Bowen sometimes performs a cleansing or blessing. "This isn't like an exorcism," she said, but it can involve sprinkling holy water and burning incense. (Again, sage aromas are thought to be especially potent.)Not all entities are evil, Bowen emphasized. Some, like the Miljo lady, "just (do) not want to go away."Psychic phenomena were part of Bowen's life from an early age. "My mom talked to folks on the Other Side all the time," she said.It wasn't until the 1980s, though, that Bowen felt she could "come out of the psychic closet." On a parallel path, she built a career as a social worker (she has closed her office but still teaches) and as an actor in local theater productions such as "Steel Magnolias" and "Morning's at Seven."Bowen now does readings periodically at Poplar Grove Plantation or on request. She does podcasts and periodic workshops and telecourses.One favorite topic: Coping with "energy vampires." Don't picture Count Dracula or Edward Cullen – think more along the lines of Debbie Downer. "We encounter people like this every day," Bowen said. "They just drain our energy. When you leave those people, you think, ‘Lord, I'm exhausted.'?"When countering the negativity, boundary setting is important, Bowen said: "‘No' is not a dirty word."

Ben Steelman: 343-2208

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